Inch Levels (12 page)

They managed without any curtains for a few weeks and Sarah made an excuse to the family, and the story was never told. I wish she would tell it, Cassie thought. It might change some minds.

*

Cassie.

Well, of course Patrick was thinking about Cassie.

He thought about her each time they came through the wards with the tea, the coffee, with the Digestive biscuit balanced on the saucer: tea and coffee and Cassie went together with an absolute inevitability. She provided layers of – something in his childhood. Of what? Strangeness and comfort combined. Strangeness, for she seemed to put something of a spoke in the wheel of a nuclear family: mother and father and two bright children. Although that was an exceptional fact in itself: that was a strange sort of family, at that time and in that place. What? – only two children? Catholic families tended to aim for the stratosphere when it came to children, with six, seven, ten the usual numbers; Cassie’s presence, then, provided just one more layer of strangeness to an already strange situation.

But comfort too: always there, always rattling around. Making up for what their mother could or would not provide.

She was an orphan: he and Margaret knew this. She had been slotted into their mother’s family – ‘placed’, they would say now – back in the summer of 1937. She was sixteen at this time, their mother some years younger. This much of the story had they pieced together over the years: slowly, looking through paperwork and gleaning the occasional slender fact from their mother herself. Her own mother had died in the spring of the year: her father would normally – this was the Irish way – have been expected to find himself another wife, and fast, with the resources of the community placed at his disposal to locate one and seal the deal as soon as could be arranged.

But it turned out that their unknown grandfather wasn’t in the mood. He didn’t want to find himself another wife: he had been more than satisfied with his first one, and didn’t much care for the idea of a substitute. His house needed a woman’s touch though, that was certain, and his own daughter was still too young to do what was needed.

These were the facts, put together slowly.

‘The nuns sent her,’ their mother said: and Patrick and Margaret, whispering and imagining, came to see a huddle of nuns, all habits and wimples, crape and veils, black and white, cooking up a conspiracy between them. This solution? – to pluck a likely-looking girl from the county orphanage and establish her in their grandfather’s house as cook, housekeeper, washerwoman and general help. Someone not uppity, someone who could be relied upon not to get ideas above her station. They imagined that to the nuns who ran the orphanage, their grandmother’s early death must have been quite a blessing, no two ways about it.

Cassie would do! Cassie was immediately lined up to step in. What an answer to prayer! Sure, what else would she be fit for?

Cassie: a little slow, a little dreamy, and a dab hand with pastry. The children loved her: she was their fixed, calm centre. They exploited her every opportunity that came along: exploited her goodness to the hilt, running rings around her, demanding she make cakes and soup and sandwiches. She existed to service their needs.

Although sometimes they bit off a little too much.

*

Patrick placed his hands on the counter-top – and sprang, lifted himself. Then knelt and reached for the biscuit cupboard. His mother had slipped something in here earlier – something: a packet of biscuits, of chocolate, he’d watched her from the doorway. Now she was gone, away for an hour or two. ‘Back in an hour, Cassie,’ he heard her say. Gone to the butcher?

Gone, anyway: now the coast was clear. Now he and Margaret had the place to themselves. Cassie wouldn’t mind, Cassie didn’t count.

The package was there. Blue, with white stripes. Sweeties. Maybe mints? They were new: he’d never seen them before. The Rich Tea tin was there too, but he knew already that there was nothing to be found there. Only old, soft biscuits. Nobody would want
them
.

He felt Margaret behind him and turned, precarious on the counter-top; his knees hurting already from the press of the hard surface on his kneecaps.

‘You’re not allowed,’ Margaret told him piously – but he had his answer, flourishing the contraband package; and she moved forward, rapidly. ‘What are they?’ She examined the package.
Goodies
. ‘What are Goodies?’

‘Let’s open them and see.’

In a moment, the package was ripped open. Little discs of chocolate, with an odd powdery bloom – but chocolate just the same. And now they heard Cassie in the hall. Her soft slippers flapping on the wooden floor, as always. She shuffled through the hall, she came into the kitchen.

Very short, very small. Patrick was almost taller than she was, already; Margaret was taller, definitely. They measured their height, last week, then measured Cassie – and how they had crowed with triumph.

Now, they didn’t bother to hide the package of Goodies. Cassie wasn’t their mother: she wouldn’t snatch, she wouldn’t raise her voice, she wouldn’t skite them across the legs. Most likely she wouldn’t do anything at all.

‘We found them, Cassie,’ said Patrick.

‘
Goodies
,’ read Cassie.

‘Do you want one?’ he asked generously. But she shook her head and smiled a little.

‘I’ll have a cup of tea instead,’ she said, and she flapped softly across to the sink, filled the kettle, looked out of the window. The garden was alive.

*

The garden is alive. There’s the sun shining on the water in the bird bath that she filled early that morning, when she had the house to herself, the garden to herself, the birds shrilling and singing. Now the afternoon garden is silent, but still alive. The sunlight is white, thought Cassie, on the water; and green through the leaves. I’ll make some tea, she thought, and go outside for a few minutes; and leave them to it. And suddenly she laughed: she laughed and laughed, there at the sink, until a tear rolled down her cheek.

The children stared. ‘What are you laughing about, Cassie?’

She shook her head. She made her tea, still laughing, and went outside.

*

The chocolate buttons – the Goodies – tasted… strange. But definitely chocolate.

Later, they were sick: both of them, just a little. ‘It’s your own fault,’ said their mother, ‘for sneaking around the kitchen the minute my back’s turned. And it’ll teach you to ask before you eat.’ She had given the Goodies to Roger, the black Labrador who lived over the garden wall. She had a soft spot for Roger, who was plump and friendly and glossy and who didn’t answer back; and she often bought him dog treats. The Goodies were new, but Roger liked them already. ‘You should have asked Cassie,’ added their mother, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves to clean up the little bit of vomit on the floor. ‘Ask next time.’

*

Sarah, who came to visit once or twice a week. Who ate grapes and crunched on the seeds. Who was very much alive: who had become the sort of person who was determined never to grow old, never die, who was determined to outlive the whole world.

Patrick was trying to make sense of this, too. He was trying to make connections.

His mother would outlive him. That’s pretty definite, he thought. That’s looking like a good bet. The rest of the world, he thought, I can’t speak for.

She moved about these days in disguise. On a permanent basis. She had gone in for fleecy pastel wools in her widowhood: not quite shawls – that would be too weird – but cardies and scarves. Yes: to act as a disguise. And it seemed to work too. People treated her like a sweet lady. In the past, she’d had an eye for expensive, hard-wearing tweed suits: the sort the rain would run off, as though it were metal-plated. It stood out, in a place like Derry: people would look at you, and that was presumably the point.

Now, though, the nurse took one look at her pale blue or pale pink wool and rushed to fetch a cup of tea, to make a fuss of her. Patrick kept his eyes closed and refused to say a word. And prayed – in vain, needless to say – for the end to come: death, he thought, would be preferable to this.

The day before, she had been on top form.

*

‘Tea,’ said Sarah. ‘Tea would be lovely. If it isn’t too much trouble.’

‘No trouble at all,’ he heard the nurse say. He heard her leave the room: he heard the door swing open, he heard it close, he heard shoes squeak into the distance. He kept his eyes shut. Other senses took over: he heard his mother sigh and settle herself in the high-backed chair; he smelled her disguise, her perfume of jasmine and rose.

The disguise, he thought, is absolute. The room was silent.

Presently, the nurse returned. A clink of a cup, a saucer, the tinkle of a teaspoon. The nurse was – she must be – busy: but his mother ensured, now, that she stopped what she was doing, that she follow up the cup of tea with conversation, with her time and energy channelled in a new direction. Any news on my son? – the first, polite question. No: the only one, for his mother held information at arm’s length: even now, in this extreme environment, where questions and the needs of others must be paramount. She sipped her tea and focused on her own concerns; and he heard the floor squeak and squeak again, as time ticked on dreadfully, as the jobs mounted up, as the nurse – he could sense it – grew more and more desperate to get away.

His mother had a trick: he had seen it deployed a thousand times. She would reach out and grasp a wrist: she took it and held it, so that the person simply could not get away without being unpardonably rude. Patrick’s eyes were closed – but he knew she was doing it right now, doing it to the nurse. There was a strange breathlessness in the nurse’s voice, and he’d heard this before too. The girl was all at sea.

‘Never?’ said his mother, sounding surprised. ‘Well now, there you are. That seems strange, I must say, in this day and age.’

She was talking about southern Spain: about some Costa or other, the one she visited last year.

‘I –’ said the nurse.

‘I know,’ his mother said. ‘Each to their own, dear: you’re quite right. Or her own, in this case. But the
sunshine
. And the Alhambra –’

His mother spoke of the Alhambra. The nurse did not know about the Alhambra. Patrick lay and listened, with a strange, bitter satisfaction. At least, he thought, at least it isn’t only me. At least she from time to time selects other victims too.

Well, serve her right, probably. Nurses and medical staff need metal plating themselves, he thought, and they all too frequently display it to me. Since when was a little lady so impossible to handle?

So he told himself. But of course he could never handle his mother. He never could – so he could hardly bitch about other people not being able to handle her either.

I could never handle her, he thought. Margaret could never handle her. He, in fact, had been a bit better at it: Margaret was reduced to jelly by their mother, or to gasping, wordless fury, or to supplication – to a range of states, in fact, and none of them in any way constructive or flattering. Bawling at her mother as she stumped from a room, a door slamming in her wake; or incoherent in the face of a patronising expression; or, or, or. ‘Why would you do something like that?’ That being: German at school, or art, geography, history. Brown bread baked from scratch. ‘Sure, I wouldn’t bother, if I was you: you’ll never be any good at it. You’ll have people laughing at you.’

And later: ‘Those hips: couldn’t you do something about them?’ A fishwife. Who’d have a fishwife around them? And what about that hair?

Poor Margaret, he thought: that was how it was, for her. No wonder she settled for Robert: done to get away and stay away.

Armour plating. How odd it sounded: to describe one’s own mother as armoured. And yet it was the image that came always to mind. The tweed suits repelling water, the tough skin repelling love, the words, the language crafted to keep one at a distance.

The eyes – that had something different to say, though impossible to tell what. Interpreting what the eyes had to say would be a life’s work. Nobody would have the time.

Margaret might have made the time, had she been given a little encouragement. But none was forthcoming, and that was an end to that.

She was always clear-headed, his mother, with an iron constitution and an iron turn of phrase. Honed, no doubt, from many years in a girls’ school, where iron turns of phrase came in very useful. And she also could boast of a generally iron will: she spoke her wishes, and they tended to come to pass.

And perhaps, he thought, perhaps I ought not to slap her down too hard. Not too hard. My mother kept the family together. This is a fact, he thought, of history.

‘And I loved the local food. The seafood,’ his mother told the silent nurse. ‘We export most of our fish to Spain.
I
say we should try keeping some of it.’

Patrick lay silently, and listed facts as once he had listed capitals of the world. The objective was the same: to create and maintain order, to feel on top of things.

Margaret, he thought, tried to drown me in the sea off Kinnagoe beach on a summer’s day long ago, when I was six years old and she seven or thereabouts. This is a fact of history: she denies it, but I claim it as an unalterable truth. Then she saved me. That was our relationship. This is a fact.

My father had a stroke four years after that day on the beach. Another fact. My mother took over the management of the family, of its finances, of everything. Another fact.

Martin was still young, when it happened: only in his late-thirties. It happened on the night of the 1964 General Election.

‘They’ve booted them out, they have, they have!’ Martin said excitedly. ‘They’ve put Labour in again. At last! – well, just about.’

He was watching the results on what he liked to call ‘our new suburban telly’. ‘Our suburban telly for our suburban house, our suburban dream,’ he would say, waving a hand at the long windows overlooking the patio, the still bare garden. ‘Who’d have thought it, ladies and gentlemen? We’ve made it at last.’